laws of the United States contain provisions for the return of fugitive slaves from one State to another. The principle of postliminium does not rest upon any fiction, nor is it any exceptional rule existing in the international law. The municipal laws of one State have no more authority or recognition within the limits of another than it is consistent with the law or policy of the latter to permit.

In those States in which slavery is prohibited the claim of the foreign master for the services or the custody of his slave whom he has imported is not recognized or enforced during his sojourn, and the slave may appeal to the civil tribunals for protection in case the attempt to maintain it is made; but the law of the State of the temporary domicile or sojourn is not recognized or enforced in the State to which the master and slave belong and the claim of the master will be upheld on his return. This proposition is exceedingly clear, and the most eminent jurists of the United States and Great Britain have sanctioned it and the texts of the Roman Pandects are consonant to it: "Si vero servus transfuger it ad hostes; queoniam etcum casu captus est, dominus in to postliminium habet. " The articles of the code on this subject are a specimen of pedantic impertinence without a parallel. The enlistment of negro slaves as a part of the Army of the United States cannot be regarded as having any object but one. It is a part of the system of the United States Government to subvert by violence the social system and domestic relations of the negro slaves in the Confederacy and to add to the calamities of the war a servile insurrection. The savage passions and brutal appetites of a barbarous race are to be stimulated into fierce activity.

Such a war involves necessarily the abandonment of all rules, conventions, mitigating influences, and humanizing usages. The enemy who adopts such auxiliaries proclaims in advance his desire as well as design that the war shall be one mutual extermination. The Congress of the Confederate States at their last session adopted resolutions which have the force of laws in the Confederate States. They are the only reply that the Department has tho make to the articles of the code and the practice of the United States on this subject.

The articles of Military Order Numbers 100 upon the subject of the exchange or parole of prisoners require a passing notice. the persons to be considered as prisoners of war, those to be released as non-combatants, and the terms on which the former should be exchanged, may be regulated by cartels agreed upon by the belligerents, or in the absence of such agreements on the us ages of war and the particular instructions given to the commander of the capturing force by his government. The law of nations authorize the dismissal of prisoners on their parole under promise not to carry arms for a certain time or during the continuance of the war. They affirm that a commander may make engagements with the enemy to this effect; but such engagements have their limits; the limits suggested are that he cannot undertake that his troops shall never bear arms again against the enemy, though he may engage that they shall not do so during the existing war, because the enemy may so long detain them in captivity. It is obviously proper that the possession of the prisoner should be complete, jure victoria, by the conqueror and the spes recuperandi frustrated. Hence the paroling of prisoners on the battle field before the contest is ended is inoperative and void. But this Department does not consent to the claim of the United States to determine when or under what circumstances the parole of a prisoner may take place. They may punish their soldiers for giving a parole or accepting a